The present invention relates to munitions.
A known type of munitions projectile is a so-called segmented rod projectile, or penetrator. As the name implies, such a projectile is in the form of a rod that is made up of interconnected segments. The projectile is launched toward a target from a medium-to-large caliber gun, a missile, or even just gravity-dropped from high altitude, for example. At a particular point in the projectile's flight toward the target, the segments are separated from one another by an appropriate separation mechanism. The target is thus impacted by the separate but collinear segments, rather than being impacted by a unitary projectile. This is advantageous because of the segment aspect ratio effect that results in added penetration efficiency of the multiple impacting segments. This will typically produce greater penetration than would a unitary projectile of the same total mass and length. For this type of projectile to be effective the impact velocity, segment spacing and segment alignment are important design factors.